


Stupid Boy

by sparxwrites



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Mob, Flirting, GTA AU, Gunplay, M/M, Serial Killers, protective!geoff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-17
Updated: 2014-06-17
Packaged: 2018-02-05 02:23:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1801903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparxwrites/pseuds/sparxwrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“So,” says Gavin, already on his fourth beer since Ryan slid into the booth opposite him, pink-cheeked and a little glassy-eyed, “you kill people for a living, right? You’re- the Mad King. Ryan.” No one knows his last name, if he even has one. Not that he needs one; Mad King is title enough.</p>
<p>Ryan resists the temptation to pull the man out the back and just shoot him in the head. It’d be easy – he’s got a gun on him, tucked in the back of his jeans as it always is. No one would hear it over the noise of the club next door, no one would find the body</p>
<p>He tells himself it’d be a waste of a bullet.</p>
<p>(In which Gavin is the oblivious son of the mob boss Geoff Ramsey, and Ryan is the contract killer he tries to hire on a dare.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stupid Boy

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Ryan 'Mad King' Haywood](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/56194) by Scibie. 



> My half of a sort-of exchange with a friend, who did [this fantastic piece of art](http://scibiearts.tumblr.com/post/89081112134/a-guide-to-homoerotic-subtext-of-all-the) to go with it. It's part of a verse where Gavin is the adoptive son of Geoff Ramsey, notorious mob boss, but has no idea what his father figure does for a living. Ryan is a contract killer under Geoff's employ that ends up with his eye on Gavin for... less than innocent reasons.

“So,” says Gavin, already on his fourth beer since Ryan slid into the booth opposite him, pink-cheeked and a little glassy-eyed, “you kill people for a living, right?”

Ryan resists the temptation to pull the man out the back and just shoot him in the head. It’d be easy – he’s got a gun on him, tucked in the back of his jeans as it always is. No one would hear it over the noise of the club next door, no one would find the body

He tells himself it’d be a waste of a bullet.

“If you want to be crude about it.” He takes another sip of his whiskey, makes a face; it’s the cheap stuff, bitter and tasteless on his tongue, but you get what you pay for. Not one for excesses, Ryan takes his alcohol cheap and nasty, as long as it’s enough to give him that edge of floating power. “I prefer to think of it as...” He hums, thoughtfully, watches with amusement as the man hovering on the edge of drunk opposite him leans in a little. “…taking care of problems.” Which is true, because he doesn’t always kill; doesn’t always need to. Sometimes a flesh wound is warning enough.

Gavin licks his lips, takes another pull of his beer and frowns when he realises it’s empty. Ryan catches the bartender’s eye, raises an eyebrow and ducks his head towards Gavin, and she nods.

There’s silence for a heartbeat, two, where people usually ask more questions or push an envelope or folder across the table to him. Gavin stays silent, looks a little awestruck, a little scared, and Ryan _knows_. He just knows.

He bites back a sigh. “Do you want to hire me, or are you here on a dare?” he asks, because it’s unusual that people manage to find him for a dare but not unheard of.  
“Um…?” says Gavin, and Ryan _knows_ , before he even says anything else, feels the urge to wrap fingers around that scrawny throat and _squeeze_.

The urge must flash across his face, because Gavin suddenly pales despite the alcohol, downs half his beer in one anxious swallow. “No!” he half-squawks, eyes wide. “No, I’m- it’s not a dare. I- a friend, Michael. He- he wanted me to, uh, check you out

It’s painfully obvious he’s lying, but at least it’s marginally entertaining. “Bullshit,” says Ryan, finishing the rest of his whiskey in a sharp swallow and enjoying the terror spreading across the other man’s face, before eventually relenting. “The least you can do for wasting my time is to buy me something decent to drink.”

One drink turns into two, and by the time Ryan’s finished that – his third whiskey of the night, a half-measure considering he’s got to ride back to wherever the hell he decides to crash tonight – Gavin’s on his sixth or seventh beer and far drunker than he should be just from that. Probably Barbara trying to help him out, he thinks, glancing over at her as she flashes innocent white teeth at the patrons. She can usually tell when he’s feeling the urge to murder a client, and helps to get them out of his way.

By the time Ryan finally gets bored of Gavin’s inane babbling (that even expensive whiskey can’t make up for), he’s drunk enough that his eyes are unfocused and his cheeks have gone beyond pink to bright red, bent across the table and swaying forward with every breath.

The fact he’s blind drunk means the only reasonable thing for Ryan to do is take his wallet and leave him in a back alley to come back to himself. He’s being generous, really; it’s not like Gavin would be hard to kill, leave his body somewhere as a warning to other time-wasters.

The problem comes when Ryan hauls him out the front of the bar, mumbling and hanging off Ryan’s shoulders, pushes him up against the wall in a position that’s almost intimate, and slips a hand into his back pocket to grab the man’s wallet. The problem comes when he pulls it out, opens it to check what’s inside, and sees the surname _Free_ on a debit card.

Ryan leaves him half-slumped against the wall and babbling to himself to storm back inside and curl angry fingers around the edge of the bar, waiting for Barbara to notice him.

It takes a few moments for her to do so, but once she does she grins at him, leans on the counter and raises an eyebrow. “Another whiskey?” she asks – Ryan comes in here often enough she knows what he likes. “You’ve managed to get rid of your time-waster, then.”

“Do you know who he is?” hisses Ryan, pushing the violence down, fighting the urge to grab or punch. “Do you _know who he fucking is_? He’s the Ramsey’s fucking toy, that’s fucking who!” There’s sharp almost-panic in his voice, because Geoff’s fairly laid-back as far as bosses go but harming Gavin Free is a pretty sure-fire way to get on his bad side. “What did you put in his drink?”

Barbara swallows hard, leans away from him a little, doesn’t even think about lying. She knows what he’s capable of – knows what Geoff’s capable of, too. “Not drugs, if that’s what you’re thinking. Little bit of vodka. I figured you wanted him gone.”  
“I do,” growls Ryan, dragging an irritated hand through his hair. “But I can’t toss him out on the street like that. Geoff will have my head.” He pauses. “If anything happens to him, I’m blaming you.”

He strides out without waiting for an answer, uncoils a little when he realises Gavin is where he left him; there’s a new puddle of vomit on the pavement that he skirts around, frowning in distaste. “You’re coming with me,” he says, wrapping an arm around Gavin’s back and tugging him forward, calming when he realises the other man can still walk.

It’ll make the fact that Ryan’s got to get him to the nearest safehouse on the back of a fucking motorbike a little bit easier.

He gets Gavin onto the seat first and then sits down in front of him, grabbing Gavin’s arms and pulling them round his waist until the other man’s fingers lock together over his stomach and he doesn’t feel like he’s going to be losing his passenger the moment he accelerates. “Hold on,” he says, starting the engine. “If you puke on me, I’ll put a fucking bullet through your head.”

“Mmh.” Gavin’s arms are tight around his waist, body skinny and full of sharp angles that Ryan can feel even through the leather of his jacket, breath hot and thick with alcohol against the side of Ryan’s neck.

He bites his lip the whole way home, blood staining his teeth and pooling bitter copper in his mouth.

-

When Gavin wakes up, he has a splitting headache and no idea where he is.

He’s lying on a sofa of some sorts, he knows that much – although sofa seems to be a generous descriptor, given the lumps and the holes, the suspicious stains, the fact that the back cushions are missing entirely and the bullet holes in the arm of it.

There’s also a man sitting against the wall opposite him, watching him, and calmly cleaning a piece picked from the pile of gun parts spread out in front of him. There’s a pistol at his side, a whole one, loaded by the looks of things, and Gavin bolts upright with a low noise of terror.

The throbbing in his head promptly drives him back down again, doubling over with his ears between his knees, and he retches, spitting bile onto the carpet and swallowing against properly vomiting. The man laughs.

Gavin blinks up at him through his eyelashes, considers apologising for spitting on his floor and then deciding against it when he sees the state the floor is in, and frowns. “Ryan?” he croaks out, tongue trailing over his teeth and wincing when he realises the whole of the inside of his mouth tastes of fuzzy dryness. “Where- where _are_ we?”

Ryan shrugs, sets down one part of the gun and picks another up, goes back to cleaning it. There’s a cigarette hanging from his lips, burnt nearly down to the last embers, and a half-full bottle of cheap whiskey at his side. Gavin’s stomach rolls at the sight of it. “An apartment,” he says, casually, stubs his cigarette out on the floor as if it isn’t a fire hazard, and holds out the bottle of whiskey. “Breakfast?” His eyes dance with amusement.

There’s several seconds of gagging, Gavin swallowing hard and trying not to spit more bile into the carpet at the mere _thought_ of alcohol right now, before he can force out a, “No thanks.” Ryan laughs again.

Patient, for once in his life, Ryan waits for Gavin to stop making small, choked noises. Waits for him to sit up, swallow hard, take a deep breath of and then another. The air in the apartment could hardly be classed as fresh, stale cigarette smoke and bleach and gunpowder not quite covering the lingering, familiar smell of blood, but it’s probably a damn sight better than whatever the inside of his mouth tastes like right now.

“Still about to vomit?” he asks, when Gavin looks like he’s got a better handle on his bodily functions. Gavin shakes his head, winces, because the urge to throw up has passed but his headache has not. It’s good enough for Ryan.

He hums, slots his gun back together efficiently, almost unconsciously, hands so practiced at the task he barely seems to need to think about it. “Good. Now get out. I have a job to do.”

“…Do you have any asprin or anything?” Gavin’s not quite sure why he’s staying to ask questions of a guy who’s loading bullets into military-grade handgun – but then, he never has had a particularly spectacular sense of self-preservation.

Ryan’s on his feet in a second, has crossed the room in a second more, gun still in hand and Gavin suddenly can’t remember whether he saw him load it or not. “Get out,” he says, calmly, winds a hand into Gavin’s hair and tugs his head so the cold muzzle of his gun is pressed against the other man’s temple. “Or I’ll fucking shoot you.”

Gavin whimpers.

It’s slight, but it’s there, in the half-part of his lips and the way his pupils dilate at the touch of cold steel to his skin, and Ryan’s surprised for barely a half-second before he smirks. “Oh,” he says, quietly, as if he suddenly _understands_ – because he does, gets now why Gavin was stupid enough to look for him on the basis of a dare.

He’s a glutton for danger, gets off on the thrill of it. The stupid, _stupid_ boy.

Slowly, he drags the muzzle of the gun down to press at the corner of Gavin’s mouth; listens to the way his breathing hitches and _grins_ , wide and feral. “Oh, do you like that?”

Gavin parts his lips, just a little, to lick them with an anxious tongue, and Ryan can’t resist. He slips the gun sideways, pushes in, a little carelessly considering metal can chip teeth. Thankfully, it doesn’t, although the sight catches Gavin’s lip and tears. Blood beads across the cut.

That seems to be enough to snap him out of his trance and he flinches back, coughing, spitting the taste of oil and metal and gunpowder out of his mouth. “Bloody hell,” he croaks, practically climbing the wall behind him to get away from the madman and his gun. “I’m going, I’m going!”

He scrambles over the arm of the sofa, sideways, eyes on Ryan’s face all the way to the door. The man watches him back, gun at his side and something that might be a smile pulling at the corner of one mouth – he can feel it on the back of his neck as he shuts the door behind him.

He can feel it on the back of his neck the entire damn way home.

-

Geoff’s sleepy-eyed as usual when Ryan meets him in the bar that night, hunched over a bottle of half-drunk beer and watching the other patrons with the air of someone used to unexpected attempts on his life. There’s a tumbler of whiskey sat on the table, opposite him, and Ryan slides into the booth and downs half of it in one swallow.

Humming appreciatively – it’s the expensive stuff, as it always is with Geoff – he sets the tumbler down and cocks an eyebrow at his boss. “You wanted to see me, _sir_?” It’s a small joke between the two of them, based off their equal hatred of formalities, and Geoff smiles just a little.

“Yeah,” says Geoff, sliding an envelope across the table to him. Ryan picks it up thoughtfully, moves to break the seal, and stops at a hand around his wrist. “Not here.”  
A job, then. “Okay,” says Ryan, shrugging, slipping it inside his jacket and into the pocket in the lining of it. “How long’ve I got?”

“A few weeks,” says Geoff. “Not urgent. But it needs to be professional.” Ryan has a name for going big, for going messy, for saying _fuck the witnesses_ , and this job can’t afford that. If he could, he’d have Ray handle it, or even Jack, but Jack’s out of town and he needs Ray for matters even more delicate than this one.

He’ll just have to hope Ryan listens to him on this one, for once.

Turning back to his beer, he takes another mouthful of it, ignores Ryan opposite him – a clear cue for the man to down the rest of his whiskey and leave. Geoff likes to keep these meetings short, discrete, so he grits his teeth when Ryan sprawls across the seat like he owns the place, spreads his legs a little and takes another mouthful of whiskey and eyes Geoff for a second before speaking.

“You know, your little thing – Gavin, isn’t it? He was in here last night,” he says, conversationally, as if he doesn’t know the words won’t set every protective instinct Geoff has screaming.

He’s not disappointed. “What the fuck? _Why_?” asks Geoff, fingers going white-knuckled around the neck of his beer. He finally deigns to look at the man opposite him, and scowls when he realises the prick is _smiling_.

Haywood might be one the best in the business, but that doesn’t mean Geoff has to like him. Or trust him. Or do anything other than give him orders and pay him, actually.

“He said something about a dare, or a bet, with someone called Michael. Isn’t he one of yours, too?” Ryan shrugs, downs the rest of his whiskey and sets the tumbler down with a dull noise of glass against wood. “Anyway, he was looking for me.”

There’s something intensely satisfying about the way Geoff spits out muttered curses, the way his eyes promise violence. Michael will have bruises the next time they meet, Ryan knows, if he still has his life – and perhaps it’s petty, but he’s looking forward to seeing the kid taken down a notch. So much arrogance doesn’t sit well on such narrow shoulders, especially the shoulders of one who’s never killed.

Unable to help himself, Ryan pushes a little further. “Strange little creature,” he says thoughtfully, hums at the memory of Gavin’s wide eyes, of the part of his lips. “Seemed _very_ fond of my gun. Was that something you taught him?”

Geoff’s on his feet before Ryan can reach for the gun tucked in the back of his jeans, hands slammed on the table. A few of the other patrons look up, and then look away, because it’s none of their fucking business. “What the fuck did you do?” snarls Geoff, and Ryan holds up his hands, slowly, because he’s got no doubt that there’s at least one of Geoff’s men or women in the bar with them, watching.

He’d rather leave here without a hole through his skull.

“I didn’t touch him,” he says – and then, because damn his mouth, damn his inability to stop pushing, adds, “much.”

There’s a hand around his throat, and he panics, grabs his gun and presses it to Geoff’s forehead and damn the consequences. “Not like that!” he hisses, wild and furious. Thank god for the small cover the booth provides them, the protection from prying eyes. “I wouldn’t touch him like that. I’m not a _rapist_ , Geoff.”

After a long moment of staring into his eyes, Geoff lets him go, waves a lazy hand at a woman sat at the bar who’s suddenly become very interested in their conversation. “No,” he says, slowly, sitting down. “I suppose not.” Ryan’s a killer for hire, but he still has a moral compass. Perhaps a largely non-functional one, but still.

Ryan swallows, puts his gun away, glances at the woman at the bar. “He got passed-out drunk,” he explains, quietly. “I couldn’t exactly leave him here, so I… took him somewhere safe. I assumed you and Griffon would not appreciate my presence on your doorstep at one in the morning.”

The neighbourhood Geoff lives in isn’t exactly the kind of one that’s friendly to people like Ryan. It’s a little too upperclass; neat lawns and white picket fences and the kinds of neighbours who’d call their police from behind net curtains if they saw a man like Ryan arrive. Geoff doesn’t like him visiting.

He thinks of the way Gavin licked his lips, the way the blood beaded on them as they stretched around the muzzle of the gun, and can’t help but think that’s a shame – and something must show in his eyes, because Geoff no longer looks so relaxed.

 “You stay away from him, Haywood,” snaps Geoff, voice low and dangerous. He doesn’t look sleepy any more – he looks angry, eyes tight at the corners and dark in the low light. “You stay away from my fucking son if you want to keep your job and your head, okay?”

Ryan shrugs, stands up, tosses a twenty onto the sticky table between them to cover the cost of the whiskey; takes a mental note of his boss’s slip-up. “Maybe,” he says, calm and quiet in the face of the storm that is Geoff Ramsey, a smirk curling at the corner of his lips, “maybe you should keep your _son_ away from me.”


End file.
